Staten Island Advance/Anthony DePrimoCops thwarted a would-be jumper from plunging off the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge during high drama yesterday afternoon.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- In a matter of seconds, police managed to prevent a 36-year-old Staten Island man from plunging off the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge yesterday afternoon, averting what could have been the latest in a recent string of deadly drops from the iconic span.

The drama unfolded at about 3:30 p.m., when Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority Officer Martha Gonzalez, who was patrolling the span, saw a vehicle stop on the Brooklyn-bound side of the upper level, said MTA spokeswoman Judie Glave.

She approached the vehicle and the man driving it "took off" toward the edge, Ms. Glave said.

Police described the vehicle as a black Cadillac Escalade and law enforcement sources identified the would-be jumper as Ricardo Pearce, 36, according to the Daily News.

"She [Gonzalez] went after him [Pearce]. She pulled him back," Ms. Glave said.

A detective from the 120th Precinct Detective Squad, Greg Naeder, was crossing the bridge, when he happened upon the scene. Ms. Gonzalez was in the process of subduing Pearce, so he got out and helped handcuff him, Ms. Glave said.

Naeder had been on his way to Brooklyn to drop off a car for another detective, whose vehicle had broken down on the Belt Parkway, police sources said. It turns out the 36-year-old Pearce took his brother's car in Annadale to get to the bridge, those sources said.

Five people, all male, have plunged to their deaths from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge since December, and police this spring prevented two additional attempts.

The most recent took place on Thursday, when a man, about 33 years old, abandoned his car on the upper level and jumped off the bridge. The man was still breathing when police plucked him from the water, but he died not long after at Staten Island University Hospital, Ocean Breeze.

On June 8, a 46-year-old Brooklyn man abandoned his car on the lower level and jumped, and on May 27, a 54-year-old Sanitation worker from Todt Hill plunged from the upper level of the Staten Island-bound side of the span.

In 2008, the MTA installed a half-dozen phones on the bridge that connect to LifeNet, a suicide-prevention hotline. A spokesman for the Mental Health Association for New York City told the Advance in February that the hotline has "never received a call from the Verrazano from someone in psychiatric distress."